Borek aka Blankity-Blanks

Hi guys - I've just ordered a brush from David Borek of Blankity Blanks to replace my old brush (had for 9 years and was a gift so no idea what make/hair type as its unmarked!!) has anyone had any experience with this guy's brushes and if so what do you think of it/them?!

The brush below...!!

Makes me think of Mae West.


Marty

Who's that guy who does the boxing stuff? Don King!!

Santa was good - the brush arrived yesterday and will be test friven tomorrow. Initial impressions:
Knot size is 24 as promised, the handle is totally amazing - a fantastic shape and well balanced with a beautiful grain. All I have as a comparison is my old unspecified brush so I can't compare initial bristle softness to other makes.

I'll do the pic/follow up thing over the next few days...

I bought a couple of his premium Silver tipped 20mm brush heads and I really like them. The only thing I have to compare them to is my machine made Shavemac. They are much softer and really bloomed.
The only thing I'd like to see is for him to set up the website so you can purchase from it. Now you have to call, which means you leave a message and play phone tag. He's a real talker so if your a wood turner you can get some good information. A lot of his stuff looks the same but that probably true about me also. He also has some really nice wood blanks.

I'll be getting one of his brush heads in a while. I'm working on the handle at the moment but it won't be done for at least 2 weeks. I'm doing it in stone and doing it without machines, all by hand. I'll love that brush once it's done.

I have bought supplies from David and I will be happy to share my thoughts and opinions about doing business with him via PM. The quality of the supplies was fine, I was not disappointed with that in the least. Very nice product.

-Scott-

OK, so here it is.... I described the brush out of the box above and the pic of the new brush is also above, so:

I tried to use a similar format to the other reviews on this site and to provide a picture log as below.

pic 1 (top left): The test kit: 1x Borek 24mm knot silvertip brush, 1x $2.99 bowel from Target, 1x tube Palmolive red (love that hospital fresh scent!).

pic 2 (top right): A quick soak of the brush in hot water to wet the brush hairs and warm the kit up! During this period a quality control test supervisor is shown inspecting for a scientific test set-up.

pic 3 (middle left): A squeeze of shaving cream. Mmmm green and medical smelling...

pic 4 (middle right): Approx. 30 seconds of whipping up the cream, circular beating and some pumping of the brush in the bowl, producing some nice lather

pic 5 (bottom left): A further 20 seconds later and a large amount of thick creamy lather roughly the consistency of whipped cream.

(cont'd next post...run out of pic uploads!)

Nice looking brush. It appears to build a great lather! I have to admit, I thought that picture three was something left behind by the quality control inspector!

Randy

final pic (see below) - here I've squeezed the brush a bit and collected the lather at one side of the bowl to try to demonstrate the volume, though it's a little hard to show the depth of the bowl and lather there. There is alot though!

The shave:

Well the brush is soft on the face but not floppy at all. I think that my old brush was somewhat stiffer and I've got used to a bit of a scrub when lathering up my face, this one is somewhat softer. It held alot of lather well during transfer to my face. This is also a bigger knot that I have had before, and it feels big too; the handle is nice and long and well weighted however and this made the brush easy to guide round my face, though I felt a little precision was lost compared with my smaller older brush. I wanted to order a 26mm knot at first but after a (very long) chat with David Borek when ordering it he persuaded me that 24mm would be more than enough. He's right, in fact I think 22mm would be a good size. Straight out of the box I decided I ought to give the brush a couple of shampoos (not for smell: that was fine, I just thought I ought to do it) and the during the first shampoo I found a couple of loose hairs. With subsequent shampooing and this test I've come across no further loose hairs.

So would I reccommend this brush? Yes. For $105 shipped I think it is tremendous value and is very unique. I hope this is of interest and help to anyone out there considering a brush from this less well known manufacturer. 1 caveat - David Borek can talk the hind legs off a donkey and loves his work, so make sure you set a fair bit of time aside if you decide to call him!!

Next phase.... building a stand for it!

David Borek can talk the hind legs off a donkey and loves his work, so make sure you set a fair bit of time aside if you decide to call him!!

Thankfully he has a toll free order number cause he kept me on the phone for a half hour. But he did turn me on to a goos source of turning tools.

Doc,

Just how much Palmolive did you use to generate that lather??

Scott

ScottS said:

Doc,

Just how much Palmolive did you use to generate that lather??

Scott

Click to expand...

2.5 snurdles


I agree that the hair in these knots has a good overall feel to it. Similar "spring" to the Omega silvertips.

I initially used more and redid the pics as there was too much lather to see the bowl!! The amount shown is just a small squeeze; roughly the size of half a badgers eyebrow.........!!!!!

beautiful brush!

that line of palmolive is about 4 times as much as i use.

Yeah, I'm using much much less now. I'd not used it before and was guessing the amount. This mornings shave was with a significantly smaller squeeze and I added more water which thinned the cream out some. Better results!!

doc i'm actually going in the other direction, that is, i started out using less cream than i now use.

lathering properly is not rocket science, but it definitely is trickier than it seems at first.

I've just finished the handle for the brushknot that I want to use. As soon as the whole thing is done pictures are coming. Because I'm rather proud of it. Because I did the whole thing out of a hard type of soapstone by hand. Took me weeks but it's done now. Just waiting for the brush knot now.

DocB said:

I initially used more and redid the pics as there was too much lather to see the bowl!! The amount shown is just a small squeeze; roughly the size of half a badgers eyebrow.........!!!!!

Click to expand...

3 weeks later...how's the brush holding up? I am thisclose to ordering some brush heads from him, and I was wondering.

Well it's been a while now I've had the brush and a while since I last posted here as work has kept me very busy however I thought an update might be nice...
I love my brush; it just has not gone wrong in any way and I have been using it every single day. I think in retrospect I should have gone withbestbadger rather than silvertip as I sometimes wish it was less soft, but thats really personal preference. I think in total it lost 5 hairs out the box and has in no other way failed to perform.
I can say nothing more than that I would have no hesitation in buying from David Borek again (though as I am back in the UK, the phone chat may cost as mucg as the brush!!!)